When Sorrow Sang
by Nightshade Scribe
Summary: The Losgar incident, Amrod POV. Deeply angsty, understandably.


It is morning, nominally. In this endless dark, it could be evening for all we know. It is bitterly cold so near the sea, and I shiver as I pack those few supplies I have with me. Ambarussa was wise to stay in his cabin, even if he had only that short time before he was hustled out so we could burn the ships. I regret that now…those were very beautiful, not to mention useful.

"Minya!" It is Tyelco calling. "Where are you?"

"Coming!" I shoulder my pack, strap on my sword and join the others. Their faces flicker oddly in the light of the few torches being carried.

Atar strides to the front of the crowd and begins to speak, rousing words that I would appreciate were I more awake. I look over, expecting to see Ambarussa at my side, and see only Macalaurë.

"Have you seen Ambarussa?" I ask him.

Macalaurë looks puzzled. "No. I thought he was with you."

"Russandol?"

The mutter quickly passes amongst my brothers, and the consensus is the same: nobody has seen him. A terrible foreboding begins to stir inside of me. I felt a flicker of it last night, but ignored it.

Meanwhile Atar seems to have noticed something amiss, for he has fallen silent. He looks around, scanning the crowd until he finds us. "There are only six," he says with a frown, coming up to us. "Where is Atya? I do not even recall seeing him leave the ship."

No. _No._ "Did you—did you not then rouse Ambarussa my brother?" My breath is coming faster and faster, and I feel my head start to spin. "He stayed onboard—he said that he would not come to sleep in discomfort."

"What?" Atar whirls to look at the smoldering skeletons of the proud Teleri ships. "That ship I destroyed first!"

Nobody has touched me, but those words are the worst blow I have ever received. I actually cannot catch my breath. "Then rightly you gave the name to the youngest of your children," I manage to whisper. All around me I hear gasps as people realize what Atar has done. "And _Umbarto_ 'the Fated' was its true form."

Atar is looking out to sea, and probably not even listening.

Has he a heart of stone? I run up to him and grab his cloak."Fell and fey are you become!" Now I can scream. "You that could murder your own son, you—" Atar twists out of my grip and stalks away.

I want to pursue him, but now my feet will not move. I stand, shaking, until Russandol comes up and puts his arms around me. I wish he wouldn't; the only one I want beside me is Ambarussa. But I cannot find the strength to move away; all I can do is lean against Russandol's chest and wonder why no tears are coming.

Out of the corner of my eye I see the host drawing away from myself and my brothers, who are standing or sitting nearby, shocked. A few are weeping for their youngest brother.

Yet he was ever more _my_ brother. We were together from the very beginning; we came from the same seed, grew in the same womb. He was born moments after me, and I am told that we would both would wail incessantly if we were separated to be fed or cleaned or shown to some acquaintance. As we grew up we grew also into some separate interests, but we still spent much of our time together. Still told each other things we would tell no other. For example: shortly before Atar's banishment, Ambarussa had met a girl called Marillë, and her name began coming up more and more in our conversation. While in Formenos they had kept up a constant correspondence, with him keeping every one of her letters. And Ambarussa told me, after first swearing me to secrecy, that when the term of banishment was over he was going to ask Marillë to marry him.

Now that wedding would never be. I had never even seen this would-be sister, and I do not know if she and Ambarussa had even had a chance to speak before we left Valinor.

Russandol's tears are running down my forehead. I wipe them off and push him away. "Minya—" he begins.

"No." What good is Minya when there is no Atya? "Don't call me that anymore. Pitya will do." Umbarto my brother is, now, but to me he can only be Ambarussa.

"Fine. Pitya, don't—"

"I'm going down to the ships. I need to find him."

Russandol nods. "Then one of us should go with you. I—"

"No." He will be too sympathetic, and right now I want to be left alone. "I want Tyelco."

"Tyelco?"

"Yes." He spent the most time with Ambarussa and me; he taught us everything we knew about hunting. And he will know what to say, if anything.

Tyelco is sitting a little apart, his face in his hands. Huan, as ever by his side, is nudging his master's face, concerned. He looks up when Macalaurë taps his shoulders, and I see that he has been crying.

"Pitya wants you to go down to the ships with him," Macalaurë says. "He's going to look for Atya's body."

"Ambarussa."

"Ambarussa's body."

Tyelco gets up and looks into my face. "You are sure?" he says softly. "You cannot be sure what you will find."

"He would have done the same for me."

Tyelco nods. "Let us go, then." He motions for Huan to stay back; Huan whines but obeys.

The way is steep, and we both have to concentrate to keep from sliding on the pebbles.

"Atar knew," I say, stepping around a boulder. "He knew that Ambarussa was on the ship; he didn't want him to go back—"

"Hush. He would never do that."

"What would Atar not do these days, Tyelco? Tell me that."

Tyelco says nothing for a long time. Then he says, "There is indeed very little he would not do in these times. Yet I do not think that he would willingly harm any of us. He has been hard on us throughout our lives, but with our best interests at heart."

"So he said."

Again Tyelco is silent as we pick our way down the rocks. Then: "You know—Pitya—that Amil was very ill after you were born?"

I nod. I have heard the story from several of my brothers: the strain of carrying twins, especially after five other children, had been very hard on my mother. It came to the point where Ambarussa and I were delivered two seasons early in order to save her life, yet even so she had lain close to death for almost half a year. She recovered, of course, but never fully regained her strength.

"When you were several days old, Russandol rode to Haru Finwë to ask him to speak to Atar. I was hiding nearby, so I heard what they were saying. Atar was crying."

My head shoots up. When we returned to Formenos after the Darkening, Atar locked himself in the room with his father's body, and once I heard something that might have been crying, but that was the only time.

I say this, and Tyelco shakes his head. "No, I know what I heard. I was afraid at first—I thought that Amil had died—but then Haru calmed him down. Atar was…terrified. He kept speaking about Amil and Haruni Míriel, but you and Atya—"

"Ambarussa."

"You and Ambarussa kept coming up as well. He said he didn't think you and Ambarussa could live, being so small, and it was when he said that that he sounded the worst. It would have devastated him to lose Amil, but you and Ambarussa were more than he could bear."

We are at the water's edge now, and Tyelco splashes away, leaving me to think on what he just said. The water is cold as ice; within moments my legs are completely numb. Burnt timber is everywhere. Will I even find Ambarussa here? Or has he been reduced to ashes? An image comes to me of him running, confused and frightened, through the burning ship, and I threw some of those torches…I clutch a timber for support, and find it still hot. I plunge my hand into the cold water, then withdraw it. Let me suffer some of what my brother suffered.

I should start looking where his ship was, though now it is difficult to tell one skeleton from the other. When I reach the remains of the ship, I find it to be the most damaged of them all. The water steams whenever a bit of wood is shaken down. I search for several minutes finding nothing. Tyelco looks up at me and shakes his head.

What if there is nothing left? What if I am wearing my brother's remains in the water soaking through my clothes?

"Pitya—over here."

I run through the water, soaking myself, and find Tyelco kneeling beside a tangle of wood. He holds out one hand. "But be warned, Pitya, he is…bad."

"I want to see my brother."

Tyelco stands aside, and I can see Ambarussa. His body is not entirely submerged in water—he is lying face down across a beam, facing away from me. I turn him over and gasp. Tyelco is right—the fire has not been kind; only a little more than half of Ambarussa's face still looks like him.

"He may not have felt any pain," Tyelco says. "Perhaps he was knocked unconscious—see that wound on his head?— and only then the fire reached him."

I would like to believe that.

"And considering what we all are going to face, perhaps it is a kindness of Ilúvatar that he was spared."

But what about me? This may be a kindness to Ambarussa, but what kindness have You for _me_? Ambarussa, my brother!

This runs through my mind many times as I crouch there in the freezing water, clutching my brother's body, finally letting my tears run over his shoulder. I don't know how much time passes; with no light it is impossible to tell.

"Pitya." Tyelco puts his hand on my shoulder. "We have to go back."

I nod. "May I have your cloak?"

Tyelco understands, and helps me to wrap Ambarussa's body. Then he picks it up with little effort, and together we ascend the slope to where the rest of our brothers are sitting in a little clump, silent and weary with grief. Huan jumps up and runs to greet Tyelco, but everyone else remains where they are."

"You found the body," says Russandol as Tyelco lays his burden on the ground.

"Yes."

"Can—can I see him?"

Tyelco shakes his head. "It's best if you don't. Do you know where there is a spade?"

Somebody procures one. To nobody's surprise Macalaurë starts to sing, and we dig a grave in harmony with his lament. Atar still has not shown himself.

With six of us working, the hole is soon finished. I watch steadily as my twin brother and best friend, still wrapped in Tyelco's cloak, is lowered into the ground. I help to fill the hole, and Tyelco and Russandol go off to find a rock that can serve as a headstone. They bring one back soon after the last shovelful of dirt has been replaced. It is a large, smooth stone, and it settles well into the earth.

"We have to mark it," Carnistir says. "Do you think anybody brought a hammer and chisel?"

Immediately I think of Amil, and I can see my brothers' thoughts heading the same way. She has no way of knowing of the death of her son. Or perhaps the Valar will tell her. Suddenly I remember her words to Atar: only six of us, she had said, would ever step foot upon Middle-earth.

"I do not think so," Macalaurë finally says. "We can use rocks, I suppose."

Rocks are found and given to Curvo, the craftsman in the family. But he hesitates. "I think Pitya should be given the job, if he likes." He turns to me and holds out the rocks. "Pitya?"

I nod. "Thank you."

"And the name?" says Russandol. "What name should be written?"

_Telufinwë Umbarto_ would seem the right choice, but Atar called him Ambarto, and to us he was always Atya. Yet there is no question for me, and I begin to chisel.

"I will write Ambarussa," I say, "for both of us are buried here."

_-finis-_

**A note on names: Amrod and Amras were called, according to something apparently published in _Vinyar Tengwar_, Minyarussa and Atyarussa: First-Russet and Second-Russet. Basically, Redheaded Thing One and Redheaded Thing Two. Thanks to FireFly07 for reminding me that this is a rather obscure bit of information. And thanks to Frank Herbert of _Dune_ fame, for I think the Leto/Ghanima relationship heavily inspired my perception of Ambarussa.**


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